Irma La Douce, 2.5 stars/One, Two, Three, 3.5 stars

Over the course of two days last week, I watched two Billy Wilder comedies with vastly different levels of familiarity to the public. Unexpectedly, I found the quality of the movies varied inversely with their reputations and wish that more people knew of the underappreciated "One, Two, Three" while ignoring the bloated and unfunny "Irma La Douce".

"Irma La Douce" was touted as reuniting the director and stars of "The Apartment", a movie that was also disappointing to me compared with what I had heard about it. Jack Lemmon here plays a Parisian cop who is fired for being too honest and proceeds to fall in love with one of the prostitutes (Shirley MacLaine) he had previously arrested. The film is nearly two and a half hours long and changes tone approximately six times. The middle of the film is the most inspired and features Lemmon, now jealous of MacLaine's customers, dressing up as a British lord who monopolizes her attention. These farcical scenes recall the best bits of "Some Like It Hot", with Lemmon rushing around behind everyone's back to avoid being recognized while he changed identities at the drop of a hat. However, the film then takes an utterly baffling turn when Lemmon is arrested for "killing" the lord, and we are actually asked to watch his trial, imprisonment, and jailbreak. MacLaine leaves Lemmon when he hits her during an argument about money, but of course the plot requires that she take him back in the end. The film's morality is murky overall, with Lemmon at one point being feted for being the most successful pimp on the block and seeming to enjoy it without thinking of where his money is coming from. At 45 minutes shorter, this could have been a satirical gem. Instead it is overlong and tries to be too many places at once.

"One, Two, Three", on the other hand, had me in tears at several points and left me wondering why I had never heard of this Wilder film before. James Cagney plays a Coca-Cola executive who is trying to bring the product to East Germany. Cagney's boss' daughter slips through the Iron Curtain one night and marries a Bolshevik, and the rest of the film is spent first trying to cover up the marriage and then attempting to convert the Bolshevik to American capitalist ways. Perhaps this type of humor is not in vogue at the moment; everyone in the film seems quietly assured of American superiority, a position which is not particularly tenable today. However, the jokes crackle and Cagney seems born to deliver them. Able support from the entire cast makes this one to watch if, like me, you're a Wilder fan who is at the point of seeking out little-known works of his to complete your viewing.

In pondering these two films together, it seems that the reason for the difference between them might have to do with Wilder's feelings about their subjects' potential for satire. From his other films we can gather that he is not truly moralistic about sex, seeming to believe that society causes most of the sexual hang-ups that plague neurotic individuals. That makes him a fairly poor choice to direct a film with such a preachy tone as "Irma La Douce"; Irma ultimately learns that she should let her man support her and that women have no business owning and using their sexuality in unconventional ways. However, as a Jew who was personally affected by the Holocaust, I dare say Wilder probably felt a bit more comfortable satirizing postwar Germany and espousing the capitalist philosophy of his adopted country. While "One, Two, Three" is anything but timely, it remains hilarious and a fine example of what Wilder can do at his best.